Eye of the Horse

Warning: This story contains a graphic highway death under questionable circumstances

“Oh my god!!” shrieked the women sitting in the airport van third and fourth row bench seats as the frigid air rushed in.  

“Noooo!” I yelled, now alone and motionless in the second row. I never saw a guy die before, but I wasn’t totally surprised by what happened.

“The door just opened and out he went!” sobbed one of the gals in the rear of the van.

His body slammed onto the pavement of Pena Boulevard at 70 mph then was splattered by the US Foods 18-wheeler behind us. Steak delivery to Elway’s Taproom & Grill at Denver International Airport was definitely delayed that day. I wish I had never started a conversation with the guy next to me on American Flight 5460 Louisville to Denver. Or maybe I should have warned him to just close his eyes. That day won’t stop playing back in my mind.

It started innocently enough.

“Hi, I’m Jim, from Meeker. Where are you from?” I said to the guy in the window seat. “My wife Annie says that if I get the middle seat I should always make friends with my neighbors to avoid any armrest fights. “ I flashed him my biggest gas and oil business smile.

“Oh hello. I’m Bryan from Kentucky, well at least originally” he replied while extending his oddly sweaty hand. “Where’s Meeker?”

“Actually, I live on a horse ranch just west of Meeker in northwestern Colorado. Horse country, just like you in Kentucky.” I pulled up the bottom of my boot top business jeans so he could see my Tony Lamas.

“Oh, hell no! I don’t live anywhere near horses now, and never will. I’m a lawyer for the U.S. Department of the Interior.” Bryan’s upper lip was sprouting beads of sweat with that comment. He looked like a size 48 man in a size 44 suit coat. I thought that might explain the perspiration.

“That’s too bad,” I said. “God never made another animal so connected to human beings, except for maybe dogs. My stallion’s big brown eyes can look straight into my soul. After a rough day of selling natural gas and fracking pumps there’s nothing like some quality horse time. Mind if I ask what happened between you and a horse?”

“Oh yeah. You could say ‘something happened’. I was fifteen years old, and a bunch of us decided to cut across a horse field to take a shortcut home from the school bus drop off. Out of nowhere this huge old gray horse charged at us and damn near bit me as we escaped over the fence. It had one scarred eye socket, and the other eye was all red and bulging and bloodshot. Scared the shit out of me. I fell off the fence and broke my right wrist. I cursed that horse, and I think he cursed me. Look, it never did heal right.” Bryan pulled up his sleeve, held up his meaty right arm, and revealed a wrist that was weirdly bent like a spoon.

“Yeah, I can see how that would spook you. How did the horse lose its eye?”

“How the hell am I supposed to know? I was just a kid, and I sure didn’t have anything to do with it. From that day on old “one-red-eye” charged up to the fence and acted like it wanted a piece of me anytime it saw us walking along the road by his pasture. Hey, have you seen a stewardess yet? I really need a drink.” Now Bryan’s hands were trembling a little. Our jet pivoted onto the runway. All eyes looked forward, engine jets roared, and we accelerated with 1.3 G’s pulling us backwards into the seats. Then the wheels were up, and we were airborne.

“Hey darling, could you please get my friend here an Old Fashion – and could ya please put it on my credit card?” Flight 5460’s stewardesses looked like they were recruited from the geriatric ward – older and slower than the spry shapely young ones from the good old days of air travel. After a few gulps Bryan’s hands stopped shaking, but his mouth kept on running.

“That’s not all Jim. I biked across country when I was 25 years old and almost got trampled to death by wild horses. My buddy and I were in Warm Springs, Nevada – the middle of nowhere in Nye County with the largest wild horse herd in America. Warm Springs had a one building combined bar/restaurant/gas station/grocery store. We were exhausted after biking the 50 miles from Tonopah in 100-degree heat and asked the barkeep if it was OK to pitch our tent for the night near the picnic table beside his establishment. He said ‘I don’t give a shit’ so we did. We conked out right away and hours later woke up to the sound of thunder. Then the noise became deafening, and the ground and tent walls really shook. I peeked out between the tent flaps and saw nothing but the hooves, shanks and fetlocks of hundreds of wild horses. It wasn’t an earthquake – we were in the middle of a fucking wild horse stampede! “

Bryan’s eyes were now bugging out and his face was red, wet and kind of wild looking as he continued. He leaned in toward me and spoke in a whisper.

“Jim, I curled up in the goddam fetal position preparing to be killed by horses. I don’t mind telling you, that I actually pissed myself.” The guy in the aisle seat (who I never did get to make friends with) heard what Bryan said, shifted away from us, and put on his headphones. I guess he had overheard enough. I wish I had done the same.

Bryan gulped down a second Old Fashion and collected himself a bit.

“Jim, when the noise stopped and the dust started to clear we crawled out from our tent expecting to find our bikes, and our gear flattened and mangled. But, Jim, not a single tent stake, or guy rope was disturbed and our stuff was untouched. There was no way I could sleep after that shit, and we had 75 miles of desert road with no water between Diablo and Ash Springs. So, my buddy insisted that we pack up and pedal before the sun came up. I wasn’t too thrilled about him pushing the whole ride in the dark idea. Just as we made it to Diablo, I heard a sound like horses snorting off to our right. And Jim, I swear, I saw one of those wild horses staring right at me with two glowing red eyes! My buddy said I was seeing things, but I know what I saw. Right then my bike freewheel jammed and sent me flying over the handlebars. I didn’t break anything, but I whacked my shoulder and scraped the shit out of my leg. That was it for me.”

He rubbed his left shoulder like it happened yesterday. The armpits of his polyester suitcoat were soaked.

I wish I had told Bryan that I needed to get some sleep before we landed in Denver – but I didn’t. He might be alive today if I had ended our conversation right then and there.

“Jim, don’t you know the only building in Diablo, Nevada was a road maintenance garage. The night shift worker there refused to lend us the use of their tools – ‘sorry, state property, boys’ - so I stayed there till the sun rose and hitched a ride to Las Vegas and flew home. Instead of a relaxing flight home, I got the scare of my life.” Bryan took another swig from his drink.

“Jim, I sat next to this Navajo Indian dude on the plane ride home and told him my story just like I’m talking to you. He was tall, wore a fancy black suit, and had his hair all pulled back and tied by a white cloth, but smelled like he just came from a campfire. He never said a word until he slowly turned toward me and said, ‘My people believe the Sun Bearer created the horse and placed the stars and the dark universe in the horses’ eyes so they can see the Dark. You know Darkness can kill a man – so can the number 3.’ Then he got up out of his seat and went to bathroom and never came back. “ With that, Bryan’s face tuned pale.

I thought he was finally done with his weird story but he leaned into me again and whispered, “Jim, I think he figured the horses see something Dark in me, and I am afraid I’ll die if a red eyed horse looks into my eyes a third time. So, no ‘three strikes and you’re out’ for me. No fucking thank you - I don’t want to see another horse in my life. My sister just moved to downtown Denver, and I just want to visit her and maybe see a Nuggets basketball game.”

“Yeah, I think some big city shopping and a pro basketball game would do you good Bryan, “I said.

But now he’s dead.

I told my wife Annie all of this when I got home.

“Honey, I was afraid to tell him about that 32-foot-high blue mustang sculpture. You know the one just outside the airport that has (of all things) two glowing red eyes. I was sure he would go into a full PTSD episode or a seizure if he knew that we call the statue Blucifer. Remember how a section of that 9,000-pound statue fell on that Jimenez guy who sculpted him – and how it crushed his leg and severed a big artery and caused him to bleed to death? I figured he didn’t know the story of the crazy guy who hopped out of his car and fired his gun at Blucifer, then turned it on himself. Annie, after we landed, I rode in the same airport van, on the same front bench seat as Bryan, specifically to distract him as we passed by Blucifer. “

“You did everything you could to help that poor man, Jimmy,” she said trying to console me while she slipped into her night gown. “Seems like it’s the van company’s fault for that sliding door not locking right.”

“Sweetie, at first, I didn’t think Bryan ever actually saw Blucifer’s red eyes. But just after we passed that bastard blue mustang, he looked at the driver’s rear-view mirror and saw Blucifer all reared up on his hind legs with those red eyes beaming. Bryan looked at me and before I could say anything he just opened the van’s side door and out he went. I should have warned him about the statue. I could have saved him.”

Annie said “Oh my god! Sounds like that guy had deep issues, and nobody can save that kind of crazy. Why don’t you go down to the barn and check on your horses? They always calm you down.”

I couldn’t tell her that I thought about horses and red eyes when I saw car taillights on the road ahead of me as I drove home that night. I couldn’t tell her that I was worried about looking into my horses’ eyes, or what they would see in me. I couldn’t tell her that on my last business trip, I had sat next to a Navajo Indian.

He wore a black silk business suit, white button-down shirt with turquois cuff links and a thin black leather necktie. His long black hair was pulled back in a traditional tsiiyéél hair bun and he smelled of burnt sage. He only spoke one sentence to me and then got up to go to the bathroom and never returned. I hadn’t even introduced myself yet.

He simply turned to me and calmly asked, “Aren’t you worried those natural gas and fracking pumps are harming Mother Earth?”